


That's the Spirit

by RurouniHime



Series: Sarah-verse [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fatherhood, Kid Fic, M/M, Presents, Superhusbands, Team as Family, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baby's first Christmas. </p><p>(This is a Sarah fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's the Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Not One of Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/961678) by [RurouniHime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime). 



> Timestamp in the [Not One of Blood](http://archiveofourown.org/works/961678/chapters/1884687) universe. Year one of parenthood for the superdads.
> 
> Other fics in this universe:  
> [Not One of Blood](http://archiveofourown.org/works/961678/chapters/1884687) (chaptered)  
> [Wherever I Find Myself](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1427317/chapters/3000364) (chaptered)  
> [Darkness is Another Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1569785/chapters/3331580) (chaptered)  
> [Bed and Breakfast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1279579) (timestamp)

“Hey, hey, hey.” Steve settles to his knees on the carpet, reaching for his wayward tree-climber just as the upper ornaments start shaking. “Save that for tomorrow, kiddo.”

“Ba!”

“Humbug!” Tony chimes in from the kitchen.

Sarah crams a stuffed reindeer ornament into her mouth. “Bumbumbum.”

“He is a bum, isn’t he?” Steve barely pulls her into his lap before she’s squirming free, sliding under his arm in a move that would make Natasha proud. He catches her again and cranes around so he can be heard clearly. “He takes forever to make a simple drink.”

“Wow.” Tony comes down the hall at last, balancing two mugs and a sippy cup. “Your good will is certainly showing. JARVIS, kill the lights.”

The room plunges into dimness, only the colors from the tree casting shadows. Tony sets the mugs on the coffee table and grabs Sarah up. “Here, let your old man drink his cocoa before he turns into Krampus.” 

“Ba ba ba,” Sarah says, bopping Tony on the forehead with the reindeer.

“Humbug, humbug, humbug.” Tony burrows his nose into her cheek with a mess of exaggerated kissy sounds.

Steve takes a long, loud sip from his mug, licking whipped cream off his lips and leaning back into the couch with a groan. “Oh god. There it is.”

“The man does like his cocoa.”

“Oh god,” Steve utters again, almost a keen. He cradles the mug in both hands as though it’s made of gold.

“Pipsqueak, you are so _awake,”_ Tony laments. Sarah throws the reindeer at the window and presses Tony’s mouth into fishy lips instead. She pats his face.

“Ba.”

“Humbug.”

“Got you a present,” Steve slurs from the couch. “But she opened it.”

“Were you being helpful?” Tony kneels beside the tree and passes Sarah a torn length of wrapping paper. “Hold this for me.”

She’s already gumming the paper to pulp by the time Tony unearths the thing it was wrapped around. He sits back on his haunches, settling Sarah on his hip, and hoists it up before him one-handed. “Oh. Oh, Steve.”

He sets it carefully on the rug so he can fumble backward for Steve’s hand. Steve obligingly struggles upright. He squeezes Tony’s fingers. 

And then it’s back to his knees on the floor, and propping the gift up in front of himself to take a good, long look. 

The photos are staggered in one large frame, differing sizes. In the upper right corner is a close up of Natasha hugging Sarah full-bodied from behind and grinning out at the camera, her red hair tangling with Sarah’s earthy curls. Lower left, a bird’s eye shot of Clint passed out on a picnic blanket under the dapple of tree-shadow, Sarah asleep in the crook of his arm. Right of center, Thor is prone and buried in sand, a sunny day at the beach, beaming as Sarah happily slaps wet clumps onto his chest. Upper left, and it’s Bruce balancing sunglasses on Sarah’s nose, yellow to match the plastic beads and giant sunhat dwarfing Tony’s daughter as she hollers silently. Left of center, Phil holding Sarah in his lap, both of them calmly gazing out of frame, both in Mickey Mouse ears. Lower right has Pepper with Sarah in a front baby-pack, navigating a herd of reporters, Sarah’s little legs in mid-kick as Pepper gestures to the huge Stark Resilient logo on day of its unveiling.

“Oh, Steve,” Tony breathes again. “Where did you get all these?” He’s found Steve now, center top, officially Tony’s favorite picture ever. It was early in the morning, the sun barely high enough to slat through the shades. Tony remembers angling his phone, holding his breath so as not to break the strange spell. Steve lies on his side in their bed in a white tank and sweats, the light casting him in sepia, his eyes low-lidded and his mouth curving gently. He’s the mirror image of a sleeping Sarah inches away. 

And directly below the center picture are Tony and Sarah, eyes only for each other, rubbing noses. Tony remembers that day, that picture, even: standing against the railing of the Empire State Building while Steve caught the cityscape below, the Hudson on the right, the sun setting in rust-gold, the wind whipping their hair aloft.

In the center, of course, is Sarah herself, the only professionally posed shot of the bunch: she wears pale peach and sits amid oceans of black velvet. She’s not smiling or frowning, just looking wide-eyed up at the camera.

He figures he can risk twenty seconds, and sets Sarah down well away from the tree so he can clamber into Steve’s lap. Steve mumbles into the kiss, rousing and holding his mug out of the way.

“Thank you.” Tony kisses Steve’s chin, his nose and his forehead and the corner of his mouth, working his way gradually over his husband’s face. “God, you’re fantastic.”

Steve’s hand comes to rest on his back, fingers clenching. “Wanted you to have something for the workshop,” he murmurs, barely coherent, but Tony hears him just fine.

He pulls away just in time to waylay their baby girl on her charge back to the low-hanging fruit. “Nice try, Emma Peel.”

She lets out a random bellow, dragging a handful of pine needles into her fist. Tony settles her on his lap again and picks them out of her grip while she tries her best to cram them into her mouth.

“Baby, no,” Steve offers disconsolately from the couch. He waves a hand listlessly at her without lifting his head. “Here, put them here.”

Tony deposits the needles into Steve’s palm, and Steve clutches them to his chest with a heavy sigh. “I am such a good dad,” he mumbles. It’s hilarious how drunk he sounds.

“Which brings me to your present.” Tony roots around under the tree, Sarah folded over his arm and squirming to get loose. “That’s—No, that one’s for _later.”_

“Later,” Steve echoes.

“Later.”

“Wait.” He struggles up again, blinking. “Later, later?”

“Like, let’s not let the minor open this one later.”

“Tis the season to be _jolly,”_ Steve hums and settles back. “I can hold that one for you. You know. If you want.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” He deposits Sarah onto Steve’s stomach to a startled ‘oof!’ For all his exhaustion, Steve immediately lifts her over his head, turning her gently from side to side and making jet fighter noises. Sarah laughs.

“Not exactly what I had in mind, but thank you.” Steve buzzes her down, kisses her face. Buzzes her back up again. Sarah grabs his nose.

“Here they are.” Tony unearths the pile at last and drags it away from the tree.

“They? Tony—”

“Oh, stop it. It’s Christmas, if I want to bury you in boxes, as your husband, that’s my prerogative.”

“We agreed, one present each.” Steve settles Sarah on his stomach and wipes a hand over his face, and Tony pauses. That exhaustion has become Steve’s default, the slightly vacant gaze when Steve’s not completely alert, and Tony is suddenly having a hard time remembering his husband’s eyes unshadowed. _At least,_ he tells himself, and doesn’t feel all that much better about it, _the smile has never faded out._

All the more reason. He gathers the boxes and scoots on his knees to the foot of the couch. “Trade.”

Steve doesn’t respond until Tony pokes his leg with the corner of a box. He groans as he sits up a third time, depositing Sarah carefully in Tony’s lap. “Which one first?”

“That one.” It doesn’t really matter. Tony’s particularly proud of these. Amazing idea, and he hadn’t even needed outside input. It had just come to him all on its own. Even the mess left behind hadn’t sapped the pleasure away. 

“But,” he says, laying a hand Steve’s leg as his husband’s thumb tears into the paper. Steve looks up, and Tony gives his knee a squeeze. Looks him in the eye. “This is thank you.”

A line creases Steve’s brow. He looks down at the box—thin, oblong—then back at Tony. Tony just smiles, hitching Sarah up as she tries to wriggle away.

Steve gets the paper off, no big fuss like last Christmas when he’d still been refolding all the used paper. He opens the box top, flips the tissue aside, and then just stares.

“I know it hasn’t been easy,” Tony murmurs, half into Sarah’s hair. Kisses her head while he’s there. _“I_ haven’t been easy. You’ve been holding up not just me, but our daughter too, while I… While I figured things out. I need you to know how grateful I am for you, Steve, to have you. And how much I respect you as a father.”

Steve still hasn’t said a word. He lifts the contents out of the box with an uncertain hand, and the shirt unfurls, spatters of color marching across the white. Literally marching, actually, that’s _the_ shirt. Maybe Tony should have saved it for last.

“Is this…?” Steve touches the heel of a footprint in bold purple.

“All that walking around getting into things. She just needed some direction.”

Steve shakes the shirt out and holds it up high, mouth open. Sarah was a devil to clean afterward, more paint strewn across the floor of Steve’s workroom than on the clothing Tony had laid out, but the sun had been bright through the windows, and Sarah hadn’t cried once. Steve gapes at the shirt for almost half a minute before startling, shooting a hand sideways for the other two boxes. He fumbles the next one open and pulls out the hoodie covered in tiny handprints, a few of them painstakingly placed so that all the fingers were clear, the rest a joyful mess of grabby-hands and blobs of paint. The third box reveals the scarf: no clear design on this one, just Sarah having fun, smearing arms and legs and belly all over the place. Tony remembers the snatch-and-grabs, each swift lunge to keep the paint away from her lips. Non-toxic paint is still paint, after all.

Steve settles the three articles of clothing in his lap, staring at one after the other. “She made these?”

“She’s a natural. Just like Daddy, huh?” He bounces Sarah a little, unable to meet Steve’s eyes. “Little Pollock here.”

“Tony.”

“I just, I didn’t help so much. And you, you were so good at it. You _love_ being a dad, you loved it from the beginning. I needed—” To force the change, to reorient, to catch up with himself. “—a little longer. You gave it to me, and you never asked. You just…” He lifts his free hand, lets it fall. “You’re incredible, Steve. You’re a fantastic parent.”

“You’re an amazing father, Tony,” Steve says, almost curious, and Tony laughs, genuinely amused. 

“Steve, you’re a natural.” He shakes his head, grinning. “I’m just a quick study. With a good teacher.”

Steve gathers the garments into a ball and scoots off the couch onto the floor, drawing Tony in by the arm. He kisses Tony firm and sweet, twice on the mouth and once just at the corner like he always does late at night. “Don’t you undersell yourself, Tony. Not about this.”

“I’m not.” The simple fact is, Steve adores fatherhood, and the baby that gave it to him. He should be able to take her everywhere even when he can’t actually take _her,_ show her off, wrap it around himself like the skill and gift that it is. “Just want you to know how much I value you.”

It’s been an interesting—an instructive year, and here at the end of it, Tony knows he’s already a better parent than his own parents were. He has Steve to thank for that knowledge, and numerous ideas on how to express his gratitude.

“I know I’m valued,” Steve says softly, but doesn’t say what should come next: _Do you know that you are?_ Tony does know it. He’d have to be, if Steve still chooses to raise this girl with him, and Tony’s not actually self-pitying enough to think it’s just for his presence as a father. Something swims through Steve’s eyes right then, a heavy, almost fraught pulse that cinches it for Tony, into a knot that’ll never be untied. Nights they used to spend tied around each other have given way almost completely. Tony is shocked by how bitter he doesn’t feel, and simultaneously how much he misses it.

It’s confusing. It shocks, but it somehow fails to surprise. He’s okay with not having what he wants so badly. He’d always thought these kinds of emotions exclusive to each other, never to work themselves in tandem into yet another warm, throbbing knot in the center of his chest.

Steve kisses him. Sarah squirms, grabs the hairs on his arm painfully, and kicks him in the thigh with her hard little heel, and it’s perfect.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. Been moving house. Been prepping for a dear friend's wedding. Been gearing up for and celebrating the release of my original novella. All are now done (yay!), but fic will be slow in coming because I am finishing up my next original project. Please bear with me: more Sarah!fic is in the works.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to coffeejunkii, particularly for the idea for Tony's gift for Steve. ^_^


End file.
